What Is And What Will Never Be
by My Broken Quill
Summary: Dean jogged down the stairs two at a time, pausing to grin sheepishly at the mural his eldest son had done twelve years ago in crayon. Poo! It declared. He’d promised to paint over it but had never really managed to get round to it. Dean/OFC


**What Is and What Will Never Be**

"… _I'm sorry …"_

Dean jogged down the stairs two at a time, pausing to grin sheepishly at the mural his eldest son had done twelve years ago in crayon. Poo! It declared. He'd promised to paint over it but had never really managed to get round to it, not that there was much point now, his baby girl was just beginning to crawl, it would be best to just wait a couple of years until she too grew out of the same phase. Otherwise he'd have to do it twice.

He finally arrived at the bottom, panting hard, and stopped to wonder where the years had gone, a couple of years back he could have sprinted up and down these stairs with no problem, now he was wheezing just running down one. Bloody family, like leeches they were, sucking his youth out - not that he wasn't still young.

Musing now over, he made his way to the living room, which was blaring with Saturday morning cartoons and littered with toys. Someone had spilt coke on the sofa and then tried to hide the evidence with a pillow, a titanic sized saucepan of half-cooked macaroni and cheese lay cooling on the coffee table next to a silver PSP. Still on, of course. Sighing loudly, Dean picked up the saucepan, switched of the PSP - after having saved the game, he'd long since learnt his lesson about that, and turned off the TV. Joker's cackle was replaced by the rap music that was threatening to deafen him from his son's room.

This weeks hotshot rapper hated bitches, was a certified pimp, would put holes in any nigger that crossed him and drove a 250k Lamborghini with Batman doors.

Teenagers.

Whoever said Rock and Roll was the music of the Devil obviously hadn't heard this guy rap.

"… _Mr Winchester …"_

A loud war cry from outside woke the mutt who crawled out from underneath the dining table with a large yawn.

Someone had put a bra on him.

Dean followed the cross dresser into the kitchen, wondering when such sights had ceased to surprise him. He put the saucepan on a table, turned off the hob - how many times had he told her to turn the damn thing off! - and refilled a bowl with bacon flavoured biscuits. _They _had wanted the damn dog, all of them had ganged up against him and forced him to give in, but if _he _didn't feed and walk the damn thing the stupid mongrel would have died years ago.

He briefly considered just letting it die then remembered the daylong funerals for each chicken egg they had bought in Wal-Mart after his youngest had learnt about death. He was a little sensitive like that.

Which is why the Winchester household was a strictly egg free zone.

The kitchen was an explosion of colour, all _her _fault. She had first started sticking up their eldest's drawings when he'd been a baby, and when their second came, his too. That's all fine and dandy when you have two, maybe three kids, but when you have five boys and a baby girl it stops being pretty. The boys now count the pictures up and god forbid if one of them has more then another.

One such situation led to a trip to the ER and a hole in the ceiling.

Which he should get round to patching up.

Best wait till his baby girl grew up a little more.

Someone started screaming, then wailing, and finally swearing. Dean winced, a teacher from the boys' school had called them down again to talk about the Winchester's boys' potty mouths, and how they were corrupting the other students. And of course, it was all his fault, which wasn't fair, besides, it's not as if they weren't going to grow up and start swearing anyway. And anyway, he'd said far worse things at a far younger age and he'd grown up perfectly fine.

"… _We tried …"_

The milk had been left out; Dean popped it back inside the fridge with a martyred shake of the head. The fridge was stocked well enough to feed a battalion and nothing inside was wholesome apart from a head of rotting cabbage that Sam had bought over eons ago, complaining that the boys needed something green in their diet.

And no, green jelly didn't count.

He bent with creaky knees to pull it out and dumped it into the overflowing bin. Even though they'd made a rule of only one ice pop each per day, at least 30 empty packets lay inside the bin.

The garden is even worse then the kitchen and Dean knows the only reason it doesn't look like a jungle is because his boys have trampled the grass dead. No seriously, it doesn't grow, even though he waters it and gives it that fertilizer thing everyday.

Then again, there are his boys to make up for that jungle feeling.

One son hangs upside down from a tree like the monkeys on Discovery, another is throwing things at him, one is either crying or singing and the teenager upstairs screams that he wishes he had been born into a different family. Wait - one, two, three … that's four. Dean frowned and looked around, searching for his second boy then found him sitting on the roof spying one next door's teenage daughter. An increase of time spent in the bathroom, a suspiciously empty internet history file and answering with 'I hate you' no matter what the question is. Yep, his son had finally hit puberty. Joy.

His little girl - he shivers every time he thinks of what'll happen to her when she … urgh, he can't even say it - sits in the middle of the melee eating sand from the sandbox. Dean fervently hopes the dog hasn't had a chance to pee in it yet.

And there _she _is, with her back to him, hanging clothes up on a washing line that almost stretches to Mexico. Dean feels his eyes go soft as he sees her reach for her ugly granny panties; it's her time-of-the-month underwear, and her can't-be-bothered underwear.

She has a lot of them.

As if she felt his eyes on her she stops mid pin and turns around, her face crinkles as she smiles and Dean smiles back then leans his forehead on the glass window that he's looking through. She's chubbier now and Dean has stopped even daring to hint the words 'gym' ever since she made him go on a vegetarian diet and asked him whether he had the heart to put her through that.

She has grey hairs now, they streak through her ginger mop like paint streaks, prematurely gotten from raising five boys, Winchester boys at that. She dealt with it better then he had when he found his first grey. That had been another trip to the ER and a firm sermon from Sam. He wasn't twenty-five anymore, his back, his bad knee, the hip, blah, blah, blah. The usual.

Now that he thinks about it, Dean is surprised they haven't both gone completely bald from stress, or aren't so wrinkled that you could hide quarters in the flaps of their skin.

They've both changed a lot from how they used to be, Dean's not as young as he used to be. Shit, okay, he's middle-aged. And hasn't gone hunting in years. His back hurts if he sleeps on the couch and he finds himself asking his son to turn down the music more and more every day.

"… _Everything …"_

_She_, on the other hand, is now the Queen of multitasking. She can cook, clean, separate the whites, help with homework, ground till next year, phone the Police Station _and _scream at Dean all at the same time. Quite an improvement from the girl she used to be, the one who couldn't even text and walk.

A car pulls up outside and the horn toots in welcome. The kids run pell-mell for it screaming like there's an axe murderer after them - Dean quickly checks that there isn't just in case, thumps from the staircase indicate that the teenager upstairs has heard the horn too and is also coming out through the other entrance.

He hears the car door slam shut and Uncle Sammy's laugh as the boys clamber all over him to get to the wholesome KFC he's bought over.

She _can _cook but it never has been edible - though she'll kill you if you tell her that. They've all become masters at swallowing before the food hits their tongues.

She abandons the washing - the dog will have dragged it all over the garden by the time she remembers it again - and goes over to join the kids, picking up their daughter along the way. Pausing unconcernedly to brush sand off her lips, they've seen everything after all and know that a little sand won't kill her. His third once swallowed a bullet and after that incident, everything else seems trivial.

She stops halfway over to Sam and calls him; they're all going to eat in the garden today, under the apple tree he'd planted when they'd moved in.

Still showing no signs of bearing leaves let alone fruit. Damn tree.

Her mouth opens as she yells at him to hurry before all the food disappears. Dean feels tears trickle down his cheeks. She tries again, an impatient look on her face.

His eyes burn, he presses his forehead harder into the glass and silently wills her to stay longer. To wait a little while more.

To not go yet.

But she does, the boys are stabbing at each other with their plastic forks, she has to go help Sam yank them apart and ration out the food fairly, skins on for some, skins off for others, chicken legs for some, chicken breast for others. She shakes her head, rolls her eyes, hoists the wriggling baby higher up on her hip and runs to scream at the boys to stop killing each other or she'll do it for them, just faster.

Then she's gone.

Around the corner, out of his sight.

Gone.

"… _Gone …"_

The vapid look on his face doesn't change as he listens to the man in the white coat tell him that his future is fucked. That his no-name children will now never be born, that he'll never cry over their births and fight over their names and kick them out with a 'good riddance' as soon as they hit eighteen.

That his wife will never get ugly and old and rather get a few more minutes of sleep then have sex with him this month.

That when he dies they'll never put 'doting father' or 'loving husband,' not even 'crabby bastard' by the son who's convinced he ruined his life.

Now he'll just be Dean Winchester and a bunch of fucking numbers.

In the one moment that she didn't look before she crossed. In the one moment it took for her to get hit by a speeding car. In the one moment it took for the doctors to announce her dead … She'd taken a husband, a father, five boys, a baby girl, a pet mongrel and an uncle Sammy with her.

The not-Uncle-Sammy is crying. Dean stares at him for a while and wishes he could cry too. But his grief feels beyond tears, crying doesn't seem adequate enough to show how dead he feels without her.

One of the lights flickers on and off, making Dean blink and look away from Sam - just Sam now. He places one hand over his heart and is surprised to find that it's still beating.

It shouldn't be.

"Dean …" says Sam faintly, his eyes are Crayola red and his face is baby's gum pink, his voice shakes as he struggles to speak. "Are you … okay?"

Dean nods carefully, smiles to put his baby brother at ease but it only makes Sam frown and cry harder. He ignores him and sits down on a chair, the plastic cover squeaks as he makes himself comfortable, and closes his eyes.

It's Parents' Day at the High school - something their daughter had hid from them, but having raised five boys they'd learnt to not trust mailed letters that said Parents' Day was cancelled this year, and had phoned up the school to check. Then his eldest was driving down to introduce them to this weeks girlfriend, probably another stick thin model who would ask if they had any salad she could eat - they didn't, apparently this one was most definitely The One. But since he's been saying that about every girl he'd been with since his voice broke - including Pamela Anderson - Dean isn't worrying about grandchildren yet. After all, he is just too damn good looking to be a granddad.

The hospital door closed shut behind Sam.

His wife was calling him, their firstborn had just said his first word. It was 'fuck,' and she was blaming him.

Fuck!

AN: This story is the very first glimpse you've gotten of an OC that will be popping up more in future Supernatural stories to come. I've already gotten a couple of short stories typed up but can't post them until I've written up the story of how they meet and get together. I know, I know - I should have posted this after the prequel right? I guess I was just too damn impatient and plus I wanted to know what you think of her, you guys like?

Okay … since I'm soooo nice, and wonderful, and many other things - you can tell me what exactly in your reviews ;-) - I'll give you a little spoiler about the upcoming Supernatural fic, just to whet your appetite. Don't tell me I never gave you nothing.

But please remember that since it's so early in the day things could be subject to change.

**Yellow Is An Affront To Nature**

She had been trying to hitch a ride and as soon as Sam had seen her, looking all little girl lost, he had demanded Dean pull over. Kept talking about karma and how often young things like her got into vehicles belonging to really bad men only to end up in ditches. How could you say no after that?

She had been tiny, short and chubby with chin length ginger hair, big blue eyes and round pink cheeks. Kind of like what he imagined a female oompa loompa might look like, in the old movie, not the one with Johnny Depp acting all creepy and shiny. She had been wearing loose blue jeans, a large dingy black t-shirt and a lurid yellow raincoat.

If he had known then that evil could come disguised as oompa loompa shaped girls in fugly yellow raincoats, he would have run her over with his car. Then reversed just to be sure.

But hindsight being a bitch and all, he thought she looked innocent as well and pulled over to let her get in. She shot them both a dazzling smile, revealing a gap in her front teeth, and clambered into the back, no doubt scuffing the leather while she was at it. See, evil.

She told them her name was Laine Marie Chartreuse, she was twenty years old, but had always looked young for her age, and was doing a bit of travel before settling down to go to university, Harvard, by the way. She had just come back from doing volunteer work in South Africa, helping vaccinate malnourished orphans, but felt she needed some time to re-acclimatise with America at her own pace first. A little much to swallow, yeah he had thought so too, but what the heck, not like he thought he was going to be _stuck _with the girl.


End file.
